The Last Witchfinder Read online

  From a writer who has been lauded as “an original—stylistically ingenious, savagely funny, always unpredictable” (Philadelphia Inquirer) and “unerring” (San Diego Union-Tribune), who has been compared to Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Updike, a writer whose pen has given us a devastating lampoon of the nuclear-arms race and an audacious answer to the outrageous question “What if God had a daughter?”—from this writer, the critically acclaimed James Morrow, comes a novel of history, adventure, science, sex, satire, absurdity, and philosophy.

  The Last Witchfinder

  Jennet Stearne’s father hangs witches for a living in Restoration England. But when this precocious child witnesses the horrifying death of her beloved Aunt Isobel, unjustly executed as a sorceress, she makes it her life’s mission to bring down the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act. A self-educated “natural philosopher,” Jennet is inspired in her quest by a single sentence in a cryptic letter from Isaac Newton: It so happens that in the Investigations leading first to my Conjectures concerning Light and later to my System of the World, I fell upon a pretty Proof that Wicked Spirits enjoy no essential Existence. Armed with nothing but the power of reason and her memory of Isobel’s love, Jennet cannot rest until she has put the last witchfinder out of business.

  Abrim with picaresque adventures—escapades that carry Jennet from King William’s Britain to the fledgling American Colonies to an uncharted Caribbean island—our heroine’s earch for justice entangle her variously in the machinations of the Salem Witch Court, the customs of her Algonquin Indian captors, the designs of a West Indies pirate band, and the bedsheets of her brilliant lover, the young Ben Franklin. Finally, in a reckless and courageous ploy, Jennet arranges to go on trial herself for sorcery, the only way she can defeat the witchfinders now and forever. Rich in detail, rollicking in style, and endlessly engaging, The Last Witchfinder is a tour de force of historical fiction.

  ALSO BY

  James Morrow

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  N O V E L S

  The Wine of Violence

  The Continent of Lies

  This Is the Way the World Ends

  Only Begotten Daughter

  City of Truth

  T H E G O D H E A D T R I L O G Y

  Towing Jehovah

  Blameless in Abaddon

  The Eternal Footman

  S H O R T F I C T I O N

  Bible Stories for Adults

  The Cat’s Pajamas and Other Stories

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  THE LAST WITCHFINDER. Copyright © 2008 by James Morrow. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

  HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

  FIRST EDITION

  Designed by Shubhani Sarkar

  Printed on acid-free paper

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Morrow, James, 1947–

  The Last Witchfinder / James Morrow. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-06-082179-1 (acid-free paper)

  ISBN-1O: 0-06-082179-5

  1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—Restoration, 1660-1688—Fiction. 3. Philadelphia (Pa.)—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775—Fiction. 4. Executions and executioners—Fiction. 5. Trials (Witchcraft)—Fiction.

  I. Title

  PS3563.O876L37 2006

  813'.54—dc22

  2005047177

  * * *

  06 07 08 09 10 NMSG/QWF 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  T O T H E M E M O R Y O F

  Ann Hyson Smith

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  If the Judge wishes to find out whether she is endowed with a witch’s power of preserving silence, let him take note whether she is able to shed tears when standing in his presence, or when being tortured. For we are taught both by the words of worthy men of old and by our own experience that this is a most certain sign, and it has been found that even if she be urged and exhorted by solemn conjurations to shed tears, if she be a witch she will not be able to weep: although she will assume a tearful aspect and smear her cheeks and eyes with spittle to make it appear that she is weeping; wherefore she must be closely watched by the attendants.

  HEINRICH KRÄMER AND JAMES SPRENGER

  Malleus Maleficarum, A.D. 1486,

  PART III, QUESTION XV (EXCERPT)

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  Then came out of the House a grave, tall Man carrying the Holy Writ before the supposed Wizard as solemnly as the Sword-bearer of London before the Lord Mayor; the Wizard was first put in the Scale, and over him was read a Chapter out of the Books of Moses, and then the Bible was put in the other Scale, which, being kept down before, was immediately let go; but, to the great Surprise of the Spectators, Flesh and Bones came down plump, and outweighed the good Book by abundance. After the same Manner, the others were served, and their lumps of Mortality severally were too heavy for Moses and all the Prophets and Apostles.

  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

  “A WITCH-TRIAL AT MOUNT-HOLLY”

  The Pennsylvania Gazette

  OCTOBER 22, 1730

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  Contents

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  A U T H O R ’ S N O T E

  a P A R T I b

  The Pricker of ColheGer

  C H A P T E R T H E F I R S T

  Introducing Our Heroine, Jennet Stearne, Whose Father Hunts Witches, Whose Aunt Seeks Wisdom, and Whose Soul Desires an Object It Cannot Name

  C H A P T E R T H E S E C O N D

  In Which Is Posed the Theological Conundrum, When Doth a Scientific Dissection Become a Satanic Devotion?

  C H A P T E R T H E T H I R D

  Concerning Robert Hooke, Antagonist to Isaac Newton and Author of the Three Laws of Priapic Motion, a Triad Certain of Arousing Controversy Even in an Age of Reason

  C H A P T E R T H E F O U R T H

  A Public Burning Enlightens Colchester, Tho’ Not Before the Convicted Enchantress Prepares Our Heroine for Both the Female Mission and the Male Emission

  a P A R T I I b

  Earth, Air, Water, Fire

  C H A P T E R T H E F I F T H

  The Salem Witch-Court Declines to Cast the First Stone but Instead Places It upon Giles Corey’s Breast

  C H A P T E R T H E S I X T H

  Our Heroine Variously Occupies an Algonquin Wigwam, a Philadelphia Townhouse, and the Nether Reaches of Newtonian Theology

  C H A P T E R T H E S E V E N T H

  A Young Benjamin Franklin Receives Instruction in the Virtues of Older Women, amongst Them Prudence, Passion, and Electric Conductivity

  C H A P T E R T H E E I G H T H

  In Which Jennet at Last Meets the Avatar of Her Ambition, Tho’ with a Result She Did Not Foresee

  a P A R T I I I b

  Reason’s Teeth

  C H A P T E R T H E N I N T H

  An Interlude of High Adventure, Including a Shipwreck, a Marooning, a Preternatural Magnet, and a Perilous Encounter with a Pirate Band

&
nbsp; C H A P T E R T H E T E N T H

  At Great Risk to Her Person Our Heroine Inaugurates a Scheme to Rid the World of Several Unnecessary Delusions

  C H A P T E R T H E E L E V E N T H

  A Metaphysics Debate Captivates Humankind, or at Least that Portion of Humankind Owning Subscriptions to The Pennsylvania Gazette

  C H A P T E R T H E T W E L F T H

  In Which Truth Acquires the Clothes of Science, Justice Assumes the Shape of Lightning, and the Narrator Finally Runs Short of Words

  A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

  Author’s Note

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  IF MY EXPERIENCE IN COMPOSING The Last Witchfinder may be counted typical, then the writer of historical fiction derives no less delight from adhering to the facts of his chosen era than he does from bending those facts in pursuit of some presumed poetic truth.

  There was indeed a 1604 Parliamentary Witchcraft Act, and it remained the law of the empire until 1736. The date of England’s last legally sanctioned execution for sorcery I have advanced slightly, from 1685 to 1689. My presentations of the Glorious Revolution, the Salem Witch Trials, the Abenaki Indian raid on Haverhill (carried out in these pages by my fictional Nimacooks), Samuel Sewall’s campaign against the New England Courant, the Baron de Montesquieu’s antipathy toward the Conjuring Statutes, and Johannes Junius’s confession of Satanism are as free of falsehoods as my research efforts and thematic preoccupations allowed.

  The young Benjamin Franklin, visiting London for the first time in 1725, formally requested, through the physician Henry Pemberton, an audience with Sir Isaac Newton, though nothing came of Franklin’s plea. Chapter Eight offers my speculations on what might have transpired at this meeting had it occurred. In 1730 Franklin devoted several column inches of The Pennsylvania Gazette to his eyewitness account of a witch trial in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Although most historians regard this article as a lampoon, I decided to take Franklin at his word.

  Finally, while the problem of witchcraft held no particular fascination for Newton, he did in fact go on record as believing that evil spirits were mere “desires of the mind.”

  P A R T I

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  The

  Prickter

  of

  ColheGer

  C H A P T E R

  The

  Firy

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  Introducing Our Heroine, Jennet Stearne, Whose Father Hunts Witches, Whose Aunt Seeks Wisdom, and Whose Soul Desires an Object It Cannot Name

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  May I speak candidly, fleshling, one rational creature to another, myself a book and you a reader? Even if the literature of confession leaves you cold, even if you are among those who wish that Rousseau had never bared his soul and Augustine never mislaid his shame, you would do well to lend me a fraction of your life. I am Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, after all—in my native tongue, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, the Principia for short—not some tenth-grade algebra text or guide to improving your golf swing. Attend my adventures and you may, Dame Fortune willing, begin to look upon the world anew.

  Unlike you humans, a book always remembers its moment of conception. My father, the illustrious Isaac Newton, having abandoned his studies at Trinity College to escape the great plague of 1665, was spending the summer at his mother’s farm in Woolsthorpe. An orchard grew beside the house. Staring contemplatively through his bedroom window, Newton watched an apple drop free of its tree, driven by that strange arrangement we have agreed to call gravity. In a leap of intuition, he imagined the apple not simply as falling to the ground but as striving for the very center of the Earth. This fruit, he divined, bore a relationship to its planet analogous to that enjoyed by the moon: gravitation, ergo, was universal—the laws that governed terrestrial acceleration also ruled the heavens. As below, so above. My father never took a woman to his bed, and yet the rush of pleasure he experienced on that sweltering July afternoon easily eclipsed the common run of orgasm.

  Twenty-two years later—in midsummer of 1687—I was born. Being a book, a patchwork thing of leather and dreams, ink and inspiration, I have always counted scholars among my friends, poets among my heroes, and glue among my gods. But what am I like in the particular? How is the Principia Mathematica different from all other books? My historical import is beyond debate: I am, quite simply, the single greatest work of science ever written. My practical utility is indisputable. Whatever you may think of Mars probes, moon landings, orbiting satellites, steam turbines, power looms, the Industrial Revolution, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, none of these things is possible without me. But the curious among you also want to know about my psychic essence. You want to know about my soul.

  Take me down from your shelf. If you’re like most humans, you’ve accorded me a place of prestige, right next to the Bible, perhaps, or rubbing covers with Homer. Open me. Things start out innocuously enough, with eight turgid but not indigestible definitions concerning mass, acceleration, and force, followed by my father’s three famous laws of motion. Continueturning my pages. Things are getting pretty rough—aren’t they?—propositions prolife rating, scholia colliding, lemmas breeding like lab rats. “The centripetal forces of bodies, which by equable motions describe different circles, tend to the centers of the same circles, and are to each other as the squares of the arcs described in equal times divided respectively by the radii of the circles.” Lugubrious, I’ll admit. This isn’t Mother Goose.

  But you can’t judge a book by its contents. Just because my father stuffed me with sines, cosines, tangents, and worse, that doesn’t make me a dry or dispassionate fellow. I have always striven to attune myself to the aesthetic side of mathematics. Behold the diagram that illustrates Proposition XLI. Have you ever beheld a more sensual set of lines? Study the figure accompanying Proposition XLVIII. Have arcs and cycloids ever been more beautiful? My father set geometry in motion. He taught parabolas to pirouette and hyperbolas to gavotte. Don’t let all my conventional trigonometric discourse fool you, by the way. Determined to keep his methods a secret, Newton wrote out his discoveries in the mathematics of his day. What’s really afoot here is that amazing tool he invented for calculating the rate of change of a rate of change. Abide with me, fleshling, and I shall teach you to run with the fluxions.

  The precise metaphysical procedures by which a book goes about writing another book need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that our human scribes remain entirely ignorant of their possession by bibliographic forces; the agent in question never doubts that his authorship is authentic. A bit of literary history may clarify matters. Unlike Charles Dickens’s other novels, Little Dorrit was in fact written by The Færie Queene. It is fortunate that Jane Austen’s reputation does not rest on Northanger Abbey, for the author of that admirable satire was Paradise Regained in a frivolous mood. The twentieth century offers abundant examples, from The Pilgrim’s Progress cranking out Atlas Shrugged, to Les Misérables composing The Jungle, to The Memoirs of Casanova penning Portnoy’s Complaint.

  Occasionally, of course, the alchemy proves so potent that the appropriated author never produces a single original word. Some compelling facts have accrued to this phenomenon. Every desert romance novel bearing the name E. M. Hull was actually written by Madame Bovary on a lark; Mein Kampf can claim credit for most of the Hallmark greeting cards printed between 1958 and 1967; Richard Nixon’s entire oeuvre traces to a collective effort by the science-fiction slush pile at Ace Books. Now, as you might imagine, upon finding a large readership through one particular work, the average book aspires to repeat its success. Once The Wasteland and Other Poems generated its first Republican Party platform, it couldn’t resist creating all the others. After Waiting for Godot acquired a taste for writing Windows software documentation, there was no stopping it.

  In my own case, I started out small, producing a Provençal cookbook in 1947 and an income-tax preparation guide in 1983. Bu
t now I turn my attention to a more ambitious project, attempting a tome that is at once an autobiography, an historical epic, and an exercise in Newtonian apologetics. Though occasionally I shall wax defensive, this is largely because so many of your species’s ills, from rampant materialism to spiritual alienation, have been laid upon my rationalistic head. Face it, people, there is more to your malaise than celestial mechanics. If you want to know why you feel so bad, you must look beyond universal gravitation.

  The ability to appropriate mortal minds accounts not only for a book’s literary output but for its romantic life as well, physical and emotional. We copulate by proxy, and we like it. But prior to any carnal consummation, we fall in love with you—madly, deeply, eternally—despite the yawning gulf separating our kingdoms, that chasm between the vegetable and the animal. The protagonist of my tale is a mortal woman, Jennet Stearne, and I must declare at the outset that I adored her past all telling and worshipped her beyond the bounds of reason. Even now, centuries after her death, I cannot write her name without causing my host to tremble.

  When I say that my passion for Jennet began in her eleventh year, I hope you will not think me a pederast or worse. Believe me, my obsession occasioned no priapic action until my goddess was well into womanhood. And yet the fire was there from the first. If you’d known her, you would understand. She was a nimble-witted girl, and high-spirited too,

  zesty, kinetic, eager to take hold of life with every faculty at her disposal, heart and loins, soul and intellect. I need but tweak my memory molecules and instantly I can bring to mind her azure eyes,

  her cascading auburn hair, her dimpled

  cheeks, her exquisite

  upturned

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  Nose

  of Turk, Jennet

  Stearne remembered from

  The Tragedie of Macbeth, was amongst